Omicron scare seen petering out with recovery in flight bookings, says senior IndiGo executive

The impact of the Omicron variant on airline travel is beginning to peter out, with flight bookings on domestic sectors witnessing a gradual revival in demand, a senior executive at the country's largest airline IndiGo said.

"When news of Omicron came across the media, there was a small fall in our bookings. But we are very confident that has dropped off now and we are back to pretty much where we were," IndiGo's chief commercial officer William Boulter told BusinessToday.in.

He was speaking at a product launch in association with Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.

Boulter said that the decline in the number of air travellers after reports emerged about the discovery of the new variant has corrected itself, with booking back on track.

"Travel is returning to its levels seen before the pandemic in rough numbers. We're back to about 98 per cent of the domestic travel that we were seeing pre-Covid," he said.

This revival in demand is jointly contributed by business and leisure travellers, visiting friends and relatives (VFR) segment and student traffic.

"We're now going to 71 domestic destinations and hoping very much that our international services, which are currently running at about half what they were pre-pandemic, will also come back quickly," he added.

As a market leader, IndiGo currently has more than 50 per cent share of the domestic traffic.

In the aftermath of the first Omicron case being reported in India, BusinessToday.in had reported that analysts and insiders didn't see it as having much of an impact on the world's third-largest aviation market.

Also Read: Here's why experts don't think Omicron will impact India's aviation sector

Launch of co-branded card with Kotak Mahindra Bank

Earlier on Tuesday, IndiGo launched a co-branded credit card in partnership with the country's third-largest lender Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd (KMBL). Named 'Ka-ching', after the sound made while opening a cash register, it is targeted at regular air passengers. Users will be able to redeem rewards for free IndiGo tickets.

Launched under IndiGo's 6E Rewards loyalty programme, the offering is available in two variants of '6E Rewards' and '6E Rewards XL'. The benefits will be available to members in both domestic and international sectors.

Terming the evolution of the credit card business in India as mirroring the growth of the aviation industry, president - consumer assets at Kotak Mahindra Bank, Ambuj Chandna, remarked, "The way aviation business has rekindled aspirations by creating a completely new market and demand, we believe the credit card business is at that inflection point in India right now."

Endorsing the recovery in the overall business sentiment, Chandna said that Kotak Mahindra Bank issued more than 1 lakh credit cards in October alone.

Also Read: WPI inflation to remain in double digits for the next few months, warn economists